Relief today for the residents of these houses in Hayes Road near Sully. They won’t now have gipsies living on a proposed new permanent camp site immediately behind their homes.

The Vale of Glamorgan Council has shelved its controversial proposal build permanent gipsy and traveller camp immediately behind a row of several houses in Hayes Road between Sully and Barry .

The scheme would have cost £2,300,000 and would have taken over an open green field which was previously designated for conventional bricks and mortar housing

The site in Hayeswood Road, near Sully had been selected for the new £2,300,000 permanent gipsy camp backs onto scores of conventional houses. Now the scheme has been scrapped.

Commenting on the Vale of Glamorgan Council’s decision to reject a proposal for a gypsy and traveller site on Hayes Road, Andrew RT Davies (Conservative AM for South Wales Central) says “I am very pleased that the Vale of Glamorgan Council has listened to residents and rejected the proposal for a gypsy and traveller site on Hayes Road.”

Mr Davies says “The proposals for the site were wholly unsuitable with the Council previously including it for residential development “

South Wales Central AM Andrew RT Davies with residents of Hayes Road, Sully who had campaigned against the gipsy camp scheme. They’ve won.

Currently the gipsies and travellers are illegally camped at the old recycling depot near Sully – and say they don’t want to move from where they are.

Cllr Kevin Mahoney (Independent Sully) demands an independent inquiry

Meanwhile Kevin Mahoney (Independent Sully) is making another formal request to the managing director of the Vale of Glamogan Council for an independent external inquiry to be carried out into “the actions of the Vale of Glamorgan Planning and Housing departments in regards to the continuing fiasco over almost seven years of flawed provision of a permanent Gypsy and Traveller site in the Vale of Glamorgan.”

He says the terms of reference for an external enquiry should looking into

Three separate supposedly exhaustively investigated lists of sites have now been thrown out as unsuitable including the final recommendations of each, and now presumably we are see a fourth exhaustively researched site list complied. Who exactly compiled these site research lists and what action has been taken over their continued rejection and reassessments?

The inexplicable situation where sites that have already been ruled out as unsuitable reinstated at the stroke of a pen. In the case of the former Amenity site in Hayes Rd Sully of course this amounted to a line being put through the assessment conclusion that previously read ‘ This site is not suitable for a Gypsy and Traveller site’ before miraculously being placed at the head of a second exhaustively researched site list without the missing last assessment line.

The fact that the Vale of Glamorgan Planning Department pursued a site ( Hayes Rd ) for almost 5 years despite it failing and being thrown out on the spot by Mr Jenkins, Welsh assembly planning inspector, on the first very basic premise that part of the site plus approach roads were located in a C2 flood zone and had been pointed out over and over by myself and others. Cllr Mahoney says “As Mr Jenkins commented at the public Inquiry ‘How on earth did this site plan ever get off the drawing board?’

How has the Vale of Glamorgan Council repeatedly submitted flawed, inaccurate – and frankly guessed – GTAA statements despite its own written admissions that it has been unable to engage with travellers in general never mind those occupying the former amenity site.This being exacerbated by the former head of the Vale housing department admitting in a public hearing to the disbelief of Mr Jenkins that the Vale had submitted a made up guestimate of required pitch requirements in order to meet a Welsh Government deadline.

The latest Hayeswood Road fiasco which presumably has taken almost two years in the making only to be shot down in flames and discarded within a month of being announced.

The failure of the VOG to carry out its duties of due care towards the current occupants of the former amenity site at Hayes Road and leaving such a vulnerable community in what has been adjudged to be ‘an unsafe location’

Why has no one from the planning department been held responsible and accountable for the related flawed and now discredited site lists or progression for almost 5 years of the Hayes Rd plan and now almost two years of Hayeswood Rd plans despite the basic now acknowledged inherent flaws in their proposals?

Rob Thomas, managing director of the Vale of Glamorgan Council

Mr Mahoney says he also wants a “formal recorded minuted meeting” with Vale Council managing director Rob Thomas (which would include his fellow Sully councillor Bob Penrose) “in order that the unacceptable handling of this matter can be discussed and those of the VOG’s shortcomings examined.”

Mr Mahoney says “I feel that internal Inquiries carried out by colleagues of those whose actions and work is being examined is no longer a satisfactory channel for the seriousness of the continued failure to progress the matter of gypsy and traveller assessment or site provision and that public confidence and concerns in the process can now only be restored by means of a visible enquiry held by an independent outside body.”

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Penarth Daily News is an independent free on-line fair and balanced news service published by NewsNet Ltd covering the town of Penarth in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, UK.
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28 Responses to PLUG IS PULLED ON PLAN FOR PERMANENT GIPSY CAMP AT HAYES ROAD

OMG thank goodness. I feel I must give praise to the Vale of Glamorgan Borough Council -(which is rare in my case), for listening to the very real concerns of not only residents in the immediate vicinity of the proposed site, but the high numbers of people that felt and knew that this was not an appropriate site for travellers. They have have listened and acted as to the people’s worries on many levels regarding the proposal. Thank you all who acted responsibly regarding any opposition and again to the Council for their sensible decision.

The land in question is an open green field (with no fence) which belongs to the Vale of Glamorgan Council ( see photo in news item). Under the Local Development Plan for the Vale of Glamorgan it was supposed to be allocated for development as a small private housing estate. 40% of the (bricks and mortar) homes on the site were to be “affordable” for low-income renters/purchasers. With the rejection of the gipsy/traveller permanent camp proposal, it is presumed that it will now be used – as originally intended – for conventional housing.

i see in cardiff queen st today we have two new homes erected one outside of a bank (yes their are one or two left) &one outside of M&S ,i think they are called one man(sorry error) person tents,in six months time when the police patrol down there they may move them on,if they are still alive! & i read in the mail the other day(its the mail so it must be true) that a jihadis wife turned down seven council houses & is now taking the council to court using taxpayers money, we ARE the untied kingdom.

I think it was a ploy by councillors, to divert some of the heat away from their controversial lunacy allowing the Big Dump in our waters.
Now they can say `We are listening to our public` I believe that there never was a plan to build the `gypsy` camp. It was a ridiculous idea even by the Councils standards…. They are not to be trusted.

The Conservative Vale of Glamorgan Council opposed the dumping of mud off Penarth as did Barry Town Council. The Labour-run Penarth Town Council pulled a debate on the mud dumping which had been called for by the Deputy Mayor of Penarth, Cllr Angela Thomas, and never voted on the issue.

I wish some of the stupid Mud comments would stop.
Oh I hear its radioactive you know! The man who works in the garage, knows someone who once saw a documentary on BBC4 about the atom……
Yes and if you hold your phone too close to your head, you will go blind you know.

If anyone has any evidence that the mud is more radioactive than background radiation then please share it with us.

That’s the point, there is no evidence of the mud’s radioactive content because – according to experts – it has been inadequately tested.
That obviously doesn’t stop some – who fancy themselves ‘experts’ – from affecting a no-nonsense, stiff upper lip approach to the reality that tonnes of inadequately tested mud (from a nuclear facility known to have had ‘accidents’) are now swirling around in the waters off South Wales and beyond.
People are entitled to express concerns, not least in the absence of thorough testing.

You are so close to being lumped with people who think the moon landings were faked because there is no evidence. How about a flat earth theory, cause there is insufficient evidence that the earth is actually round.
There is more evidence of the tonnes of car tyre rubber and particulates that get ingested everyday, but you don’t hear the tin hat brigade moaning when they drive their kids to school.
But the mud WAS tested and the levels were close to background radiation levels.
“gamma spectrometry, which produces a very conservative estimate of dose, samples from the Hinkley dredge area and the dose limit was not exceeded.”
Perhaps people should not read the Nuclear Mud headlines as this could refer to any sample of mud, gas light, brazil nuts……

And Peter Church you better sort Richard Bramhall, of the Low Level Radiation Campaign, who (in a previous post on PDN) explained more on ‘particles of Uranium and Plutonium’ saying ‘Small ones are easily inhaled. Particles one micron in diameter will be deposited in the deep lung and are small enough to go through the lung wall. White blood cells will scavenge most of them to lymph nodes. The alpha track from decay of a single atom has a maximum range of 30 microns in body tissue. Any cell hit by an alpha gets 200 times the total natural radiation dose for a whole year. There are billions of atoms in each particle, so each particle produces subsequent decays, all hitting the same tiny group of cells every few hours or days (the radioactivity rate depends on how big the particles are). See how this affects plastic at http://www.llrc.org – follow the mud dump “full reports” link.
The mud may have such a low average activity that it’s not officially classified as “radioactive” but that’s another averaging thing. It certainly contains hot particles which is why EdF refuses to have proper tests done. The mud should be left where it is.

And what is your response, Mr Know-All, to Emeritus Prof Keith Barnham, a distinguished research fellow in the physics department at Imperial College London, who argues it is possible that large amounts of uranium and dangerous levels of plutonium could have reached the mud when cooling water from the decommissioned Hinkley Point A was discharged?

It’s difficult to take a balanced view with so many differing “expert opinions” (and no little hysteria), however on a BBC Wales programme last week they interviewed a Professor Andy Cundy who’s title is Professor of Environmental Radioactivity at Southampton University.
Professor Cundy’s research is focussed on : applied and environmental geochemistry and environmental radioactivity, and covers a range of areas including sediment geochemistry, contaminated land and water management, and environmental applications of nanotechnologies.
In a nutshell he argued that whilst communication from the Welsh Government was pretty poor relating to Hinkley Point, there was no reason for any further testing to be carried out and that the level of radiation is chiefly caused by background radiation and is well within “safe” limits.
Much has been made of the comments by Emeritus Prof Keith Barnham and without doubt an expert in his field, but as I understand it his focus has been on Solar Energy technology since around 1980.

Why have you got to be so scathing and sarcastic. Its bad enough to have tonnes of mud alone dumped in our waters Peter Church as it’s us the tax payers who will now have to pay for dredging if the stuff. Don’t forget Cardiff is now having cruise ships docking which will help local businesses. What will happen when the shipping lanes get all silted up, amongst other things.

– according to experts –
If this is your expert, can you find out what formal qualifications he has, rather than just being a vocal lobbiest for the likes of “Nuclear Free Local Authorities of UK and Northern Ireland”
which doesn’t exactly make him impartial. 🙂

Tim Deere-Jones:
over 30 years experience as a freelance marine pollution consultant for
campaigning Green Groups, Citizens Groups and NGOs in UK, Ireland,
Europe, the USA and Australasia and has represented the Nuclear Free
Local Authorities of UK and Northern Ireland, Greenpeace International,
Greenpeace Australia and others on marine radioactivity issues since
the 1980s

It’s most unfortunate that people level the charge of ‘flat-earthers’ against those who are concerned about the ingredients of the Hinkley mud.
For the sake of accuracy, it should be noted that the mouthy supporters of 320,000 tonnes of sticky mud being dumped in Welsh waters – those who swallow the official line and never question – are village simpletons who need to stick a length of straw in it.

I think the anti dumpers have it- just like the anti gypsy campaigners had the right argument….. only they got it as well. Err on the side of safety and common sense eh. No-one in their right mind trusts Labour WG anyway. Look at their track record.